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    Metapunctuation: When a Comma Isn't Enough
    Metapunctuation: When a Comma Isn't Enough
    Metapunctuation: When a Comma Isn't Enough
    Ebook159 pages1 hour

    Metapunctuation: When a Comma Isn't Enough

    By Lewis Burke Frumkes

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    DON'T STOP WITH THE PERIOD

    The richness of English comes from its enormous vocabularyupward of a million words. But how many punctuation marks are available to help communicate all the subtlety and nuances of the language? A piddling handful of tired, overworked dots, dashes, and devices that fall short when it comes to delivering the written word as the writer intended it. Metapunctuation, the product of the brilliant if somewhat askew mind of Lewis Burke Frumkes, adds the absent flair and precision, ends ambiguity, and makes manifest all of English's unspoken jabs, frowns, inflections, passions, and innuendos with marks such as: phobic brackets to enclose fear gone wildly out of control infatuation marks to indicate a frivolous kind of love ring of indignation to really let 'em have it pasion waves for prose ranging from purple to blue contempto-drips for utter disdain

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateMay 12, 2000
    ISBN9781462099511
    Metapunctuation: When a Comma Isn't Enough
    Author

    Lewis Burke Frumkes

    Lewis Burkes Frumkes is a writer/humorist/teacher/broadcaster. In addition to the many books he's written his writing has appeared in many venues, including Harper's, Punch and the New York Times. He has taught Humanities at Marymount Manhattan College and Harvard University. He lives in New York City.

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      Book preview

      Metapunctuation - Lewis Burke Frumkes

      Contents

      INTRODUCTION

      1 BEGINNING AND END PUNCTUATION

      2 INTERIOR PUNCTUATION

      3 SHADES, LEVELS, AND DEGREES

      4 SEXUAL PUNCTUATION

      5 THE PUNCTUATION OF FEAR AND ANXIETY

      6 THE PUNCTUATION OF LOVE AND HATE

      7 TYPE EMPHASIS AND CONVERTED MUSICAL NOTATION

      8 DAZZLE ROCKETS AND BOREDOM BOMBS

      9 LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE PUNCTUATION

      10 TRANSITIONAL METAPUNCTUATION

      11 FUTURE AND EXPERIMENTAL PUNCTUATION

      MORE ANGUISHED ENGLISH

      For Alana, Timothy, and Amber

      Metapunctuation

      When a Comma Isn’t Enough

      All Rights Reserved © 1993, 2000 by Lewis Burke Frumkes

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

      Published by toExcel

      an imprint of iUniverse.com,Inc.

      Originally published by Dell Publishing

      For information address:

      iUniverse.com, Inc.

      620 North 48th Street

      Suite 201

      Lincoln, NE 68504-3467

      www. iuniverse.com

      ISBN: 0-595-00242-0

      ISBN: 978-1-4620-9951-1 (ebook)

      Every text, even the most densely woven, cites them [punctuation marks] of its own accord—friendly spirits whose bodiless presence nourishes the body of language.

      —THEODOR W. ADORNO

      Yet I would claim that the impulse to create a second-order symbol system—a set of marks that itself refers to a set of marks—is a deep human inclination that will emerge with relatively little provocation.

      HOWARD GARDNER, The Unschooled Mind

      Now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent German novel,—with a slight parenthesis in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the reader,—though in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he can.

      MARK TWAIN,

      A Tramp Abroad

      INTRODUCTION

      Let’s face it, American English can be very confusing. Sometimes we can clear up the confusion by just explaining ourselves further, as I am doing now, but other times the difficulty resides in the language itself. Let me illustrate:

      I love you can have any of a hundred meanings. I love you can refer to sexual love, platonic love, fatherly love, or romantic love, or it can be just an expression of admiration, adoration, or gratitude, right? I love you can refer to a male talking to a female, a female talking to a female, a male talking to a male, a little girl talking to a flower, or even a bulldog talking to a miniature schnauzer. So when the object of your affection says, I love you, which of the hundred meanings does he/she mean?

      English, you see, is full of nuances and subtleties that give it wonderful character and range but also add to its ambiguity. Most of its richness comes from its enormous vocabulary, upward of a million words, which permits for both precise and colorful expression and which has been growing larger for centuries. Unfortunately, however, for all its complexity and breadth, the English languagemakes use of only a handful or so of basic symbols, devices, and marks to help with communication, to indicate rests, moods, intentions, pauses, pitch, and stresses. Despite their obvious importance, these marks of punctuation, namely the familiar period, comma, colon, question mark, exclamation point, and quotation mark, have not multiplied the same way vocabulary has. And to make matters worse, when punctuation marks are used, they are often used poorly and in obfuscating ways. Why, for heaven’s sake, should a question mark appear at the end of a sentence in English, when it makes far better sense to put it at the beginning as certain other languages do? With the question mark at the beginning, the reader has time to prepare his interrogative inflection.

      To my way of thinking, our few guiding symbols are both overworked and underequipped for the complicated job at hand, that of regulating texts and clarifying our language. Why not augment the existing punctuation with a new, fully hybrid notational system to take account of the myriad inflections and tones in our language? Why not have symbols that can tell us what the speaker means when he says, I love you? Indeed, why not develop new punctuation more in keeping with today’s usage?

      To this end, I have created metapunctuation.

      With metapunctuation, I love you will no longer be a problem. You’ll know if he loves you deeply enough to climb the highest mountain for you, or swim the mightiest ocean. No uncertainty here. There will be symbols such as the delta sarc to indicate spoken sarcasm and the sigh to emphasize resignation. ?Was Rock being sarcastic when he suggested I go fishing. With a delta sarc you would know. ?Now do you get the idea. ?And tell the truth, don’t you prefer the question mark at the beginning.

      In Metapunctuation, I will explain the differences between the antipause and the babble, the stream-of-consciousness mark and the crescendo. God knows there are hundreds, if not thousands, of emotions and shadings present in our everyday discourse that need clarification. ?Why should a reader have to figure them out like a puzzle.

      Metapunctuation will make our language many times more efficient by simply adding into-national cues and other useful indicators and sig-nifiers. Without doubt it will increase our ability to communicate with one another and understand one another. No more stupid fights with Susan when you were really talking about the same thing. ?What could be more important.

      ?And finally, am I serious about metapunctuation and its potential impact on American English, or do I have my tongue firmly esconced in my cheek. With the proper notation, you would know.

      1

      BEGINNING AND END PUNCTUATION

      The workhorse and principal structural unit of written English, as you probably know, is the single sentence. Stitched together, and organized intelligently, single sentences in sequence become the foundation for good prose, poetry, and everyday discourse. When sentences run together, however, slipshod and unbroken, as they do after you have had too much coffee, or in freshman compositions, the result is often a meaningless hodgepodge and difficult to read. Believe it or not what you will be in your next incarnation is determined almost entirely by the last two digits of your birth year thus if you happen to be born in 1945 you will be reincarnated as a fly yes a fly yes I’m sorry I know you would rather have come back as a jewel or a Rolls-Royce but you are quite unmistakably a fly … You get the idea.

      So grammarians have devised punctuation, i.e., standardized marks, to divide the sentences into discrete events, to orchestrate the pauses and stops, the pitch and stresses, and to make the sentences easy for us to read.

      The period, for example, tells us that a sentence has come to an end. You should wait before beginning a new sentence.

      The question mark tells us that the sentence is actually a question, and also that it is over.

      The exclamation point tells us that a particular sentence should be emphasized.

      This is fine for the period, which stops us where it should. It is not fine as far as I am concerned for the question mark or the exclamation point, nor for a number of other new signs that will debut here.

      These signs should come at the beginning of the sentence, where they can tell us more about the author’s intention. At present the capital letter is the only punctuation mark we use in front to signal that a new sentence is beginning. Notice, this sentence begins with a capital N.

      All we have in the way of beginning and end punctuation, then, to separate and modify millions of words and an almost infinite number of combinational sentences are the period, question mark, exclamation point, and a capital letter. And the capital letter is the only one that comes at the beginning of the sentence. Clearly we need more. Enter metapunctuation.

      Metapunctuation, at least much of it, comes at the beginning of the sentence in the same way that you say to someone, May I ask you a question?

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